Wednesday, March 31, 2010

They say everyone has their price, and I'm no exception. Perhaps if I were independently wealthy, I'd be less corruptible, and while I'm wealthy in friends and experiences, it's hard to buy food or pay for the dentist with those. (Speaking of which, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. *sigh*)

Occasionally, I get requests to buy the domain atlasquest.com -- it's a gem of a domain name, as it turns out. When I started Atlas Quest, a google search brought up precisely zero pages that used those two words, one right after the other, and I was delighted to find the domain available for purchase. It only took a few months before I got my first offer from someone to buy the domain from me, but the offer was for about fifty bucks and hardly worth the effort. It wasn't even a company that intended to use the domain--they just wanted to "flip" the domain and sell it to the highest bidder.

Every few months, I still get one of those offers, and I've always ignored them.... until now. It seems that a World of Warcraft (WOW) has some sort of extension or something (I don't really get it myself since I don't play) that they call AtlasQuest (or AQ, for short). Notice the lack of a space between Atlas and Quest. Not exactly the same way I spell it, but close enough. I first noticed them a few years ago and found it mildly amusing at the time.

The latest offer I got was from them. At first I blew them off, like I've always done, but apparently they really want that domain name in a bad way. And apparently, making games is a heck of a lot more profitable than letterboxing is, because they offered me--well, it seems wrong to mention specifics, but their offer had five digits (and that's not including the pennies) WHAT?! "I'll think about it," I told them. What was really going through my head was, "Hell, YES!" Sure, I'd need a new domain for Atlas Quest, but a rose by any other name is still a rose, and Atlas Quest by any other name is still Atlas Quest. For that much money, I'll be happy to use a new domain!

So negotiations ensued. First, I needed a new domain, and finally settled on Apollo Quest. This has a couple of benefits. First, I can still sell the AQ patches I have. Thankfully, I had only used the AQ abbreviation on the patches, so all of the ones I've already sold will not become obsolete. Second, it still keeps the "spirit" of the original name, switching out one character from Greek mythology for another. And, it's still easy enough for people to spell. (A lot of those creatures from Greek mythology have bizarre names that are very difficult for most people to spell or even pronounce!)

Unfortunately, the domain apolloquest.com is owned by one of those domain flipper companies, so I needed to negotiate with them to get the new domain. (They were trying to sell it for $1,200, but I got them to agree to less. Still highway robbery if you ask me, but who am I to complain--I'm selling mine for tens of thousands of dollars!) It'll take about a week before that domain is officially transferred into my name and the IP address is fully propagated, but it's in the works.

Once I get the apolloquest.com domain name and it's all official, I'll move Atlas Quest to the new location, then start redirecting traffic that does go to atlasquest.com to apolloquest.com. I'll keep atlasquest.com through the end of April so people have plenty of time to learn about the new domain name and have time to adjust links on their own websites as necessary.

The first day of May, I'll start the process of transferring the atlasquest.com domain to AtlasQuest (without the space). I don't know how long it'll take them before they actually get their own website set up since that's not in my control, but any link that points to atlasquest.com will likely break at some point during that first week of May.

And that's it. Except for the name, absolutely nothing else will be changing. Marjorie will still be our chick of choice, wassa will still be a webmaster, and cheese racing will still be allowed at letterboxing events.

You got me, Ryan!! I was thinking, oh no, going to each of my boxes to replace the contact info, not that there are that many, but for some it would be woefully "no fun" at all. And then there would have been those that are out there unattended, waiting for adoption. All things considered, quite the mess, to be sure. I sure hope this is an April Fools joke. I expected many many blasts in answer to this blog message below, sure happy no one took you seriously. OD